The average poster will think "if I can gain more by blogging, why waste my time commenting?"
I'm not at all convinced the "average poster" will think that. The subset of users who are trying to be professionals or are gamers by nature may do that, but many will not. What you are doing in terms of commenting and posting whenever you feel like it, and the rewards are whatever they are (and always infinitely more than reddit or Facebook), seems quite typical to me. If that were not the case there would be even fewer users since most don't earn much if at all. That people continue to participate despite very modest rewards in most cases supports this model.
Agree. I continue to comment on issues that are important to me and has nothing to do with whether I will get paid. I was surprised to receive $11 for a comment I made on @stellabelle's recent blog about Synereo (well that is because you and several others upvoted it). But I am not going out-of-my-way to go comment there. Just on issues that I feel are important when I happen to check the top ranked posts on the site.
The issue is not that of those who bothered to join and continue to use the site, that those people won't comment without getting paid. Rather the issue is what incentive do millions of people have to join Steemit and how many tokens can we widely distribute (to millions of REAL HUMAN users, not Sybil attacks which may be the bulk of new signups) both of which are necessary to build a commerce ecosystem which could justify the entire project. I am not seeing it and the stats are tending to prove I was correct in my assumption. Yes other ecosystem apps may be on the way, so we will have to see how that might change matters, but I doubt they will implement any activity and rewards scheme which accomplishes the goal. Why? Because they think differently than I do.
My point about the comment rewards was simply that a couple $s per day is not very motivating for most people. And the activity on the site is not that compelling for most people. There are already other blogging sites as well. And much larger audiences.
You've got some hardcore crypto enthusiasts hanging in there, but you do not have any traction whatsoever in gaining the mainstream. Now some argue that from a niche demographic, you can bootstrap to a wider demographic, e.g. Facebook launched to college students initially.
But realize please that college students are already a diverse mainstream demographic (not a pigeon-hole circle-jerk of cryptogeeks and their gfs, although I've seen a few content authors who might have been entirely from outside of crypto but i am not sure and they don't appear to be numerous). And what Facebook was offering was unique, new, and compelling to the mainstream.
If we were paying well the users, then that would be something unique, new, and perhaps compelling to the mainstream. But we aren't. That was my point.
All the stats are flat to declining since July. Again perhaps some ecosystem developments can change that. I do not expect it. I've been observing carefully the ideas people have been tossing around that I have had the opportunity to read about and I haven't seen anything yet that would change my expectation. I certainly not aware of all the developments though.
I hope that is a balanced assessment. I am obviously biased because I think I have a better idea and design. So readers should take my bias and potential subjectivity into consideration. Then again, @smooth and others perhaps are biased the other direction.
